What Can We Know about Soviet-era Religiosity? A Comparison of Archival and Oral Sources from the Postwar Volga Region

Authors

  • Sonja Luehrmann Университет Симон Фрэзер Автор

Keywords:

archive materials, Mari El, religious practices, oral narratives, methodological pluralism

Abstract

Based on materials from archival research and ethnographic fieldwork in the Middle Volga region, this article considers the relationship between archival evidence and oral history in attempts to learn about religious practices in the Soviet Union. Presenting examples of three possible relationships between the two groups of sources - complementarity, convergence, and contradiction - the article argues for a reflexive methodological pluralism, where no type of source is rejected or given exclusive precedence over another, but different types of evidence are juxtaposed to one another, generating new questions.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

Колымагин Б. Крымская экумена. Религиозная жизнь послевоенного Крыма. СПб: Алетейя, 2004.

Попов Н. С. На марийском языческом молении//Этнографическое обозрение. 1996. № 3. С. 130-145.

Проект «От колхоза к джамаату: политизация ислама в сельских общинах бывшего СССР, 1950-2000-е гг.» под руководством К. Ноак и С. Дюдоанйон, www.unibielefeld.de/geschichte/abteilung/FlyerBerlin-1.pdf.

Семененко-Басин И. В. Святость в русской православной культуре ХХ века: История персонификации. М.: РГГУ, 2010.

Уразманова Р.К. Быт нефтянников-татар юго-востока Татарстана (1950-1960-е годы): этносоциологические исследования. Альметьевск: Альметьевская энциклопедия, 2000.

Шкаровский М. В. Русская православная церковь и советское государство в 1943-1964 гг.: от перемирия к новой войне. СПб: ДЕАН-АДИА-М, 1995.

Ananich B. V The Historian and the Source: Problems of Reliability and Ethics//Archives, Documentation, and Institutions of Social Memory/Edited by W G. Rosenberg and F. X. Blouin. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006. P. 490-496.

Burns K. Into the Archive: Writing and Power in Colonial Peru. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010.

Chumachenko T A. Church and State in Soviet Russia: Russian Orthodoxy from World War II to the Khrushchev Years. Armonk/London: M.E. Sharpe, 2002.

Davis N. Z. Fiction in the Archives: Pardon Tales and their Tellers in Sixteenth-Century France. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987.

Dragadze T. The domestication of religion under Soviet communism//Socialism: Ideals, Ideologies, and Local Practice/Edited by C. M. Hann. London: Routledge, 1993. P. 148-156.

Fitzpatrick S. Supplicants and Citizens: Public Letter-Writing in Soviet Russia in the 1930s//Slavic Review. 1996. Vol. 55. No. 1. P. 78-105.

Grant B. Shrines and Sovereigns: Life, Death, and Religion in Rural Azerbaidjan//Comparative Studies in Society and History. 2011. Vol. 53. No. 3. P. 654-681.

Greene R. Bodies like Bright Stars: Saints and Relics in Orthodox Russia. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2009.

Huhn U. Mit Ikonen und Gesang, oder Ein Bischof auf der Flucht vor seinem Kirchenvolk: Massenwallfahrten in Russland unter Stalin und Chruschtschow//Jahrbuch fur historische Kommunismusforschung. 2012. P. 315-333.

LeGoff J. Histoire et memoire. Paris: Gallimard, 1988.

Luehrmann S. Recycling Cultural Construction: Desecularisation in Postsoviet Marii El//Religion, State and Society. 2005. Vol. 33. No. 1. P. 35-56.

Luehrmann S. Secularism Soviet Style: Teaching Atheism and Religion in a Volga Republic. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011.

Naumescu V. Modes of Religiosity in Eastern Christianity: Religious Processes and Social Change in Ukraine. Berlin: Lit, 2008.

Niethammer L., Trapp W. Lebenserfahrung und kollektives Gedachtnis: die Praxis der Oral History. Frankfurt: Syndikat, 1980.

Northrop D. Veiled Empire: Gender and Power in Stalinist Central Asia. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004.

Pelkmans M. (ed.) Conversion after Socialism: Disruptions, Modernism, and Technologies of Faith in the Former Soviet Union. New York: Berghahn, 2009.

Quijada J. What if we don’t know our clan? The city tailgan as new ritual form in Buriatiia//Sibirica. 2008. Vol. 7. No. 1. P. 1-22.

Rogers D. The Old Faith and the Russian Land: A Historical Ethnography of Ethics in the Urals. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009.

Stoler A. Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009.

Sullivan W. The Impossibility of Religious Freedom. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005.

Vatulescu C. Police Aesthetics: Literature, Film, and the Secret Police in Soviet Times. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010.

Wanner C. Communities of the Converted: Ukrainians and Global Evangelism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007.

Werth P. At the Margins of Orthodoxy: Mission, Governance, and Confessional Politics in Russia’s Volga-Kama Region, 1827-1905. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002.

Young G. Power and the Sacred in Revolutionary Russia: Religious Activists in the Village. University Park: Penn State University, 1997.

Downloads

Published

2012-05-15

Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

Luehrmann S. What Can We Know about Soviet-era Religiosity? A Comparison of Archival and Oral Sources from the Postwar Volga Region // State, Religion and Church. 2012. Vol. 30, no. 3. P. 485–504.

Коды статьи

  • EDN QZJVKX
  • Тип статьи (РИНЦ) Научная статья (Научная статья)